“Anthroposophy in all its working, is an Easter experience, of resurrection bound up with the experience of the grave.”

In our exploration of the Easter
Paradox of both 2019 & 1924, here is my synopsis of the last lecture Rudolf
Steiner gave to the Anthroposophical Society 22 April, 1924- The Mysteries of
Ephesus. The Aristotelian Categories: The Mysteries have played an
important part in the whole evolution of humankind. The Easter Festival grew
out of the principle of initiation. Humankind is predestined to evolve to
spiritual freedom. We know that human individuals return to the Earth again
& again in their repeated earthly lives, carrying with them experiences of
former epochs into later ones. The environment created by the Mysteries is an
important factor in the progress of carrying from one age into another what
human beings experienced & what they experience again in other forms of
knowledge.

When that spiritual impulse which
has gone forth from the Goetheanum thru the Christmas Foundation meeting,
really finds its way into the life of the Anthroposophical Society it will provide
the foundation for the Mysteries of the future. The future life of the
Mysteries must consciously & deliberately be planted by this
Anthroposophical Society.

In the burning of the 1st
Goetheanum, the Anthroposophical Society has ever before it an event which can
be turned to good will in future evolution just like the burning of the Temple
of Ephesus.

Both seem a tragedy on the outside, but on the various planes of existence
these things appear in different ways, & only in the freedom can we turn to
good will that which on one plane is so wrong, for it is just thru these
terrible events that a real evolution can be achieved.

To enter into these things with sympathetic understanding we must grasp
them, as intimately as possible. How did the spiritual life of the world live
in the Mysteries? Steiner talked about the how the yearly Easter Festival
proceeds for the Earth from the constellations of the Sun & Moon, & how
the other planets are seen from the standpoint of the Moon.

And he relates that never did human hearts & minds partake so
intimately in these Northern Mysteries,
this descent from the pre-earthly into the earthly life as in the Mysteries of
Ephesus, devoted to Diana or Artemis, enabling her initiates to experience &
enter into the spiritual life & movement within the ether of the Cosmos.

A deep impression was made on those present when the Temple Goddess
expressed her joy in all things growing, springing, sprouting in the far-spread
ether of the world; a feeling that wafted thru the spiritual atmosphere of the
Sanctuary as a magic breath.

And as a consequence a certain instruction could be given with great
clearness in these Ephesian Mysteries, whose aim was to bring the secret of the
Moon forth in the human soul, creating one’s being out of the Sunlight that
wove around the Moon.

Verse Steiner gave to Ita Wegman: The Sun, in me, my King, Leads me into the world. The Moon, in me, maintains My shape, she keeps my form. Mercury holds, in me, The Sun and Moon in one. Venus in me is all, Nothing without her love. When she and Mars are one, He speaks me as a Word, So Jupiter can shine All through me wisdom’s rays, And Saturn, ripe, can beam Through me the colours that I am.

The spiritual life in Ephesus was
filled with a radiant inner light – the true dignity of the Cosmic human being,
a prefiguring of the Easter thought.

All these things bound up with the
Temple Sanctuary went up in the flames lit by the hand of a criminal.

Then Steiner goes on to reference: World History in the Light of Anthroposophy,
which he gave during the Christmas Conference.
Telling how “two Initiates of these Mysteries were reincarnated in
Aristotle and in Alexander. “

And “When the Temple of Ephesus was burning it was the hour of Alexander’s
birth. But as the Temple burned something was powerful taking place…all that
had gone on in these Temple spaces was communicated to the cosmic ether.

So
we may truly say: The continuous Easter Festival at Ephesus which had been
contained within these Temple spaces has since been written in the great orb of
the ethereal heavens.

The
human wisdom which was enclosed in Temple walls escaped & was written in
the cosmic ether & is visible to spiritual Imagination, the interpreter of
the starry script.

The
stars must mean more to us than something merely to be calculated mechanically,
or mathematically.”

For Alexander & Aristotle, there came the moment when thru the
influence of the Mysteries of the Kabiri there arose something like a memory of
the old Ephesian time which both of them had lived thru before. But in this
remembrance of an ancient time, there was a certain power to create something
new.

When the cosmic sounding in the Moon was there again & Aristotle & Alexander recognized what the fire at Ephesus had signified, when they saw how this fire had carried forth into the far ether of the world the content of the Mysteries of Ephesus, then there arose in these two the inspiration to be found the Cosmic Script written down by Aristotle, known as the Categories of Being:

Steiner asks us to take these
concepts which Aristotle first expounded to Alexander, & learn to develop
them like we did as children with the alphabet, then we will learn to read in
the Cosmos.

So we see, what was a mighty revelation of instinctive wisdom thru
thousands of years flowed into concepts with an inner force of life &
strength which must once more be revealed in time to come.

We must find again what is resting
in the grave, we must find the Sophia, the cosmic wisdom & the cosmic
light. We must learn to read once more in the great universe to experience the
resurrection of what lies hidden.

We are here to create an Easter Festival as an experience for all
humankind. “Anthroposophy in all its working, is an Easter experience, an
experience of resurrection bound up with the experience of the grave.”

It is important just at this
present Easter paradox for us to feel, the full festivity of Anthroposophical
striving. Can we open ourselves to feel how once upon a time humankind was
blessed with a divine-spiritual revelation which shone most radiantly in
Ephesus. But now all this lies buried.

How can we set free from the grave
what lies buried? And then listen to hear the words spoken on that Easter morn
2000 years ago: “That which you seek is no longer here.” Can we find it in our
hearts, & open minds, in true active way?

Then in full consciousness, not instinctively as in ancient time, we are
led forward into the new mysteries of Easter.

This too must be united with the
impulse of the Christmas conference, which must not remain a merely
intellectual, theoretic & abstract past deed. It must be an impulse of the
heart, it must not be dry & matter-of-fact. It must be sacred, solemn,
joyful.

Then just like Aristotle & Alexander, who used the fire of Ephesus
when it flamed forth like a forge in their hearts, when it flamed forth in the
Cosmic ether & then bore down to them new secrets that were gathered up
into those simple concepts.

Will we take it upon ourselves to
use what has also been carried out into the ether with the death of the 1st
Goetheanum, into a resurrection of Anthroposophia?

Can we awaken to the new dawn, shining in the far & wide ether, where
the spirit-filled wisdom of the world dwells, to fill ourselves with impulses
coming in towards us from the Cosmos?

The Anthroposophical Easter mood
must hold to this Spirit that arises ever & again out of eternal
foundations. Let us receive this as an Easter thought – as an Easter feeling
into our hearts, as we experience Good Friday anew, as Love’s Sacrificial Death
– even as we acknowledge the rending of the Temple Veil, to bring the
transformation of the Venus-principle, thru the Sun-principle of Christ.

with humble respect ~hag

***

19 April 2019 “Speaking with the Stars”: The Pascal Full Moon, became exact at 6:12 am CDT. This evening look
for Spica to the upper right of Bella
Luna & brighter Arcturus to Her
upper left.

1054 – Feast Day of Leo IX, pope of the Catholic Church. Leo IX is widely considered the most historically significant German Pope of the Middle Ages; he was instrumental in the precipitation of the Great Schism of 1054, considered the turning point in which the Catholic & Orthodox Church formally separated.

1775 – The American Revolution begins at Lexington

Henry Pierce Bone

1824 – Deathday of Lord Byron, English-Scottish poet & playwright, who Steiner refers to as “a seeker after the Palladium” in his Karmic Relationships lecture 1/11.

1882 – Deathday of Charles Darwin, English biologist & theorist, who Steiner refers to as “a seeker after the Palladium” in his Karmic Relationships lecture 1/11.

1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign

1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six

2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected to the papacy and becomes Pope Benedict XVI.

2011 – Fidel Castro resigns as First Secretary of the Communist Party
of Cuba after holding the title since July 1961.

***

POD (Poem Of the Day)

~Look, she said, leaning out the window To wave at the stream of the Pascal Moon See how the reflected Easter light rises… Mirroring strident spirals of the New Sun Calling: Become The Chalice of victory & see thru soul eyes To speak deeds clothed in spirit-light… But 1st You must drink from the cup of crucifixion ~hag